Download celebrated on the 10th of Dhul Hijja, the 12th month of the Islamic

ISLAM

one of the three major world religions, along with
Judaism and Christianity, that profess monotheism
 means “surrender” or “submission”—submission to the
will of God
MUSLIM
 “one who surrenders to God”
*Islam’s central teaching is that there is only one all-powerful,
all-knowing God, and this God created the universe.
*All Muslims belong to one community, the umma, irrespective
of their ethnic or national background.
*Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the world
*Children born to Muslim parents are automatically considered
Muslim. At any time, a non-Muslim can convert to Islam by
declaring himself or herself to be a Muslim. A person’s
declaration of faith is sufficient evidence of conversion to Islam
and need not be confirmed by others or by religious authorities.
FIVE PILLARS OF ISLAMessential duties of every adult
Muslim who is mentally able
 the profession of faith (shahada)
-'I bear witness that there is no god but Allah and that
Muhammad is his messenger.'
 prayer (salat)
-All adult Muslims are supposed to perform five
prayers, preceded by ritual cleansing or purification of
the body at different intervals of the day
-rak’assequence of units during prayer; acts of
standing, bowing, and prostrating during prayers and
facing a set direction (qibla)
-Kaabaan ancient shrine in the city of Mecca;
direction in which they face during salat
FIVE PRAYERS
dawn (fajr or subh), noon (zuhr), midafternoon (asr),
sunset (maghrib), and evening (isha)
*The opening chapter of the Qur’an, al-Fatiha, is
repeated in each unit in a prayer sequence. Each prayer
concludes with the recitation of the profession of faith
followed by the greeting 'may the peace, mercy, and
blessings of God be upon you.'
 almsgiving (zakat)
-considered as an expression of devotion to Allah
- attempt to provide poorer sectors of society
-means for a Muslimto purify his or her wealth or to
attain salvation
 fasting (sawm)
RAMADAN- 9th month of the lunar calendar
*The month of Ramadan is sacred because the first
revelation of the Qur’an is said to have occurred during
this month.
the fast introduces physical and spiritual discipline, serves to
remind the rich of the misfortunes of the poor, and fosters,
through this rigorous act of worship, a sense of solidarity and
mutual care among Muslims of all social backgrounds
 pilgrimage (hajj)
-must take place during the 12th lunar month of the year (
Dhu al-Hijja)
FROM REPORT NA PO ITO! :D
Annual and Weekly Celebrations
 Yawm Al-Jumu'ah
-"the day of congregation“
-Muslims gather in the masjid (mosque) for a khutba (sermon or
address) followed by Salat led by an Imam.
-After the Salat, people meet each other in the masjid and may
visit relatives and friends
-In Islam there is no Sabbath, therefore, there is no mandatory
closing of businesses on Friday except for the duration of
congregational services
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Ramadan
-ninth month of the Islamic calendar and is known as the month
of fasting
-During Ramadan, Muslims get up before dawn, 2-3 hours
before sunrise, and eat a pre-dawn meal
-no eating, drinking, or sexual activity between dawn and
sunset
-Muslims must implement the moral code of Islam very strictly;
the violation thereof nullifies their fast

Laylat Al-Qadr
-"the night of decree“; "the night of measure"; "the night of
value“
-worship and works of this night carry more value than the
worship and works of one thousand months
-night when angels descend with the decree of Allah
-night may be any of the odd nights of Ramadan during the last
ten days, meaning, Laylat al-Qadr may be the 21st or 23rd
or 25th or 27th or 29th night of Ramadan
-Muslims stay awake all night reading and studying the Qur'an,
listening to religious addresses and performing Salat
 I'tekaf
-isolation from the worldly affairs
-Those who are in I'tikaf are allowed to go out for necessities
only, such as for food and to use the bathroom and shower,
if not found within the mosque area.
 'Eid Al-Fitr
-first day of the month following Ramadan
-celebration of fast-breaking
-Muslims gather in a larger facility than the neighborhood
masjid and join in Salat al-'Eid which is composed of Salat
followed by an address by the Imam (leader)
 'Eid Al-Adha
-celebration of sacrifice which comes two months and ten days
after 'Eid al-Fitr
-Muslims celebrate the sacrifice of the lamb in place of Ishmael
(Isma'il) by his father, Abraham
-On this day, after Salat al-'Eid (the prescribed 'Eid prayers),
Muslims sacrifice an animal: a ram, goat, sheep, cow or
camel
-The meat is divided into three parts: one part is distributed
among the poor and needy, one part is distributed among
relatives and friends and one part is used by the family
-celebrated on the 10th of Dhul Hijja, the 12th month of the
Islamic lunar calendar, and again depends upon the
crescent sighting for the first of the month
Cultural Celebrations
 innovations in Islam and have no foundation in the Qur'an,
the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad(S) or practices of
the Sahaba, the companions of the Prophet(S)
 The following celebrations are religious/cultural
innovations which are discouraged by the informed
Islamic scholars
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Eid Milad Al-Nabi or Mawlid Al-Nabi
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most common innovative celebration in the Muslim world
supposed to celebrate the "birthday" of the Prophet
Muhammad(S).
It is an innovation of later times, reported to have been
introduced by the Fatimids in Egypt, a very corrupt Shi'ite
sub-sect.
Laylat Al-Isra & Al-Me'raj or Shab-E-Me'raj


A verse in the Qur'an (17:1) states that the Messenger(S)
of Allah was taken one night to Jerusalem and brought
back to Makkah.
There is no authentic day or date of this event recorded
nor did the Prophet(S) or his companions ever celebrate
this night.
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Laylat Nisf Sha'ban or Shab-E-Barat

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celebration which takes place on the 15th night of the 8th
month of the Islamic lunar calendar, Sha'ban but has no
foundation in the Qur'an or teachings of the Prophet(S)

Birthdays and death days of saints (awlia-Allah) and Imams

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Some Sunni Muslims celebrate such days for many
assumed saintly persons and Shi'as celebrate such days for
their assumed Imams
related celebrations held annually at the graves and
mausoleums of reputedly virtuous men (assumed saints or
awlia-Allah) of the past era
Such celebrations on or off the grave sites are not
permitted according to the teachings of the Prophet
Muhammad(S).
-meann.
Rise of Islamic Fundamentalism
 The Arab-Israeli conflict accounts for much of the
trouble happening in the Middle East. The Jews got
their lands but the Palestinians lost theirs
 Israeli victory in the 6 Day War in 1967 increased
Israel’s territory and led to the occupation of the Golan
Heights, the Sinai desert, East Jerusalem
 The old city of Jerusalem, considered sacred by
Muslim, Jews and Christians was now under the sole
jurisdiction of Israel.
 The military failure of the Arab countries to weaken
and destroy the Jewish state led to the increasing
radicalization of the Palestinian Liberation
Organization under Yasser Arafat (PLO).
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Majority of the displaced Palestinians went to Lebanon;
others had no choice but to go back to the Israelioccupied West Bank.
The expulsion of the PLO from Jordan made the
Palestinians bitter and angry at Arab countries.
On October 6, 1973, the Syrian army attacked Israeli
forces in the Golan Heights while the Egyptian army
crossed the Suez Canal and attacked the Israeli forces
encamped along the Canal. In the opening salvo of the
war, called the Yom Kippur War.
Intense diplomacy sponsored by the US and the then
Soviet Union led to a military truce.
On June 6, Israel invaded Lebanon with the aim of
destroying the PLO leadership and its military
component
Only the timely intervention of the United States
stopped what could have been a massacre.
The Americans pressured the Israelis to leave Lebanon.
In its place was an army contingent called the
Multinational Force taken from France, Great Britain,
Italy and the United States.
The Americans pressured the Israelis to leave Lebanon.
In its place was an army contingent called the
Multinational Force taken from France, Great Britain,
Italy and the United States.
The continued Israeli occupation of the West Bank and
the Gaza Strip further inflamed the Palestinians.
Frustrated and angered by their failure to get back
their homeland, and embittered by the Jewish policy of
treating them like second class citizens, the
Palestinians resisted and fought back armed only with
stones.
It was led by a new Palestinian organization which
sought to rival the PLO-it called itself the Islamic
Resistance Movement or Hamas.
The Intifadah proved to be embarrassing for Israel as
Israeli tanks are seen on TV confronting Palestinian
youngsters whose only weapons are stones.
. Many foreign countries, particularly the United States,
were pressuring Israel to negotiate with the
Palestinians to end the conflict. A breakthrough in the
negotiations occurred when secret talks between PLO
and Israeli officials in Norway led to a general
agreement where the PLO would recognize Israel’s
right to exist while Israel would withdraw from Gaza
and the West Bank
In essence, the two sides agreed that Israel would
withdraw on Gaza and the West Bank, followed by
elections of a Palestinian Council which would run the
two sites.
-mia
FROM THE PROPHET AND THE BOOK…
THE PROPHET AND THE BOOK
Muhammad, the Prophet – Islam’s central figure
-his father died before birth, his
mother died when he was 6
Quraysh – Mecca’s pre-eminent tribe, where Muhammad’s
family, the Hashims, belonged
Ka’ba – a shrine under Quraysh control, a crude structure which
in Muhammad’s day was already known as “God’s house”.
Jahiliyya – age of paganism
Christian Byzantium
Zoroastrian Persia
2 rival empires to the north
Muhammad’s era – marked by explosion of the Bedouin
population, stretching the desert’s limited resources in food and
water to the breaking point.
Khadijah – wealthy merchant’s widow; Muhammad’s first wife
- They had 7 kids; all boys died; 4 daughters
survived to adulthood
Aisha – Muhammad’s favorite wife
Shahada – bearing witness
“There is no God but God and Muhammad is his
prophet”
♫Muhammad – simple man with no capacity to
perform miracles, described himself as last in line of
prophets
Shari’a, Islamic law – based on the precedents set by the
prophet in his
lifetime
♫Islamic doctrine treats Muhammad as a paragon, a
leader in possession of wisdom conveyed to him by
God, a nearly perfect human
II.
Muhammad’s revelations – Muhammad passed them on as he
received them by word of mouth often in the marketplace.
Professional scribes – recorded Muhammad’s revelations
Abu Bakr – Muhammad’s immediate successor
- He first ordered the revelations assembled, and for
a time the competing collections circulated.
Uthman - the 3rd caliph who appointed a commission to end
the Confusion; it produced the standard edition.
Shiism – quarreled with Caliph Uthman
- Did not accept Uthman’s edition, adopted their
own.
Quran – composed of 114 suras. Every sura is said to be a
separate
Revelation
♫ suras appeared in order of length (earliest
pronouncement were briefest)
Muhammad’s first revelation – 96th read
Ulama – they contended that the Quran be properly understood
through their intercession
Mu’tazilites – body of dissident theologians
- Denied that the Quran existed for all time and
maintained that God had created it.
Orthodoz doctrine – hold that Quran existed for all time and
Muhammad simply transmitted to the Arabs a message
that was eternal.
Secular scholars – treated Quran as a historical document
-
Hypothesized that more than one hand was
involved in the preparation of the Quran and that
the prophet had not finished when it died and that
some parts of the text was lost
III.
Quran’s dominant vision – God presides indefatigably over fate
of mankind.
Islam – means ‘submission’
Muslim – ‘one who has submitted’
Abd allah – ‘slave of God’
First test of eternity accdg to Quran – whether an individual has
submitted to God’s will
♫Quran believes in heaven and in hell
♫Islam is still looks on debate on issue of freewill vs.
Determinism
♫Quran exhorts believers to choose moral conduct
Zakat – alms for the poor
Lex talionis – law of retaliation
♫ “He who hath killed a believer by mistake must set
free a believing slave, and pay the blood money to the
family of the slain…”
♫ “As for the thief, both male and female, cut off their
hands.”
Hudud – prescribed penalties
♫Treatment of slaves in 7th century Arabia - “Force not
your
slave girls to whoredom”
♫ On infanticide – “Slay not your children, fearing a fall
to a poverty. We shall provide for them and for you”
♫ Quran is a men’s document, it addresses men, rarely
women.
permits
It commends men to decent treatment of women but
Them, with scarcely more than moral qualm, to dispose
of wives who ceases to please them.
♫Dress code – “God wants women to be fully covered”,
“covering the head with a hejah”
Sheikh Gad al –Haq – insisted that the Quran requires that
women be circumcised
Jihad – personal striving for holiness or simply ‘holy war’
♫Islamic jurists held apostasy punishable by death
VI
Year 619 – the year Muhammad lost Abu Talib and Khadijah
Yathrib people – Muhammad converted some of these traders
June 622 – 70 members of Mecca’s muslim community slipped
secretly out of town
Hijra – migration to Yathrib
- Marks the beginning of the Islamic calendar
Yathrib – known as Medina,the City of the Prophet
Umma – community to which all Islamic believers belonged
Battle at Badr – great moment in Islamic history
Year 630 – Muhammad captured Mecca
632 – death of Muhammad
Abu bakr – Muhammad’s closest friend whom he named during
his final illness to lead the community prayer
- Fellow Meccan, father of Aisha
Rashidun – ‘rightly guided’
Abu Bakr – caliph(successor to the Prophet)
Ali – Muhammad’s cousin and husband of his daughter Fatima
- Became the 4th caliph
Ridda – ‘apostacy’ in Arabic lore, the rebels aimed to restore
looser
social controls of pre-Islamic society
V. Making the Sharia
Prophet- centered principle – acknowledges Quran as the
first source
of Islamic law but regard the Prophet’s precedents on
an equally legitimate basis for fixing the rules of Islamic
behavior.
♫ Muhammad is the link between God’s will and the
laws of human behavior
Shari – ‘the lawgiver’
Shari’a – the road to the watering place or ‘the Way’
Sunna – meaning ‘tradition’
- Used by the Arabian tribes as equivalent of the law
Sunni – literally means followers of tradition
Muhammad’s death – golden age of Rashidun
Shura – ‘consultation’
Omar – elected in Shura 2 years after the death of Abu Bakr
Uthman - Succeeded after Omar
- His reign precipitated as civil war, and the SunniShi’ite schism that lasts to this day
“The conflict began when Ali, sensing the
Umayyad’s dynastic ambitions began recruiting
troops to challenge Uthman. Most of the Bedouin
tribes, wooed by both, were undecided whose side
to take.While rival contingents were lining up,
Uthman was murdered by an insurgent soldier. Ali
was elected by the shura to succeed him.When the
Umayyad clan rejected the election, the civil war
broke out.” “Leading the Umayyads was
Muawiyya, a nephew whom Uthman had
appointed governor of Syria…Muawiya persuaded
Ali to accept a truce which dragged on and on. It
ended when Ali was murdered. Muawiyya seized
the opportunity and pronounced himself caliph,
without reerence to shura. It was Islam’s 1st coup
d’etat”
Hussein – son of Ali
- Formed a party Shi’ate Ali from which comes the
name Schi’ism
Schiism- to resume the civil war
-attracted the surly and poor;
-Movement of outsiders
Sunni arabs – the Islmic mainstream
680-Umayyads defeated a Shi’ite army at Karbala in Iraq, where
a giant mosque now stands as a memorial to Hussein
Westerners
Shari’a
-understand law as an
-claiming to be divine,
instrument of the state; it is
deniesto the state the
the government that makes
authority to make law.This
and enforcesrules of behavior
authority is asserted by the
ulama, the body of senior
jurists, as Islam interpreters
♫by Islam’s 2nd century, makers of shari’a broke into
several schools(Kufa, and Basra in Iraq, Mecca and
Medina in Arabia. There was no schools in Damascus,
the Umayyad capital.)
♫scholars were designated traditionists
Hadith – ‘tradition’ In Arab
♫Traditionist principles bear a resemblance to English
common law
Strict Rules of Traditionists
-they were not permitted personal opinionsor interpretations of
what the law should be.Least of all were they permitted to
propose innovations
-they were allowed to use analogy but not pure reason to derive
a conclusion
-they were also required toresolve their disagreements by a
consenses, which was long standing tribal practice.
VII.
A.D. 750 – Umayyad caliphate came to an end
Abbasids – brought Umayyad’s downfall
- Hashemite family related to both Muhammad and
Ali
- They claimed divine mission to restore the
prophet’s kin to power
♫ Abbasid triumph was as much the product of
social shifts as of a military power
Abbasid’s defeat of the Umayyads
-signaled the eastward shift of the Arabheartland from
Syria to Iraq, a transformation that was as much
cultural as was strategic
♫Life under the Umayyad’s followed Arabian tribial
ways. Under the Abbasids, Arabs embraced a Persiaoriented worldliness.
Baghdad-epitomized the new regime
Abbasid caliphs-more devoubt than Umayyads
-Venerated the newly discovered wisdom of the Greeks
-practiced a cosmopolitan self-indulgence that was
much in excess of Umayyad ways
-from late 8th to mid 9th century. They presided over the
world’s most powerful empire, Baghdad
Harun-al Rashid – most eminent of Abbasid caliphs
The Thousand and One Nights –work that is based on stories
from the Persians, Indians, Greeks and perhaps even the
Hebrews, though profoundlyArab.
-where Harun appeared as caliph and lover
-the tales it contains testify to the cosmopolitan of the
Baghdad elite
Sinbad, the sailor- central figure in the collection, is a model for
the far ranging Muslim merchant of the Abbasid era
-nrfa